If you can’t do it right, don’t do it all.
That was the overall message an Illinois commission, created to study the death penalty in that state after questions were raised about wrongful convictions there. The 14-member panel released 85 recommendations, many worthy of consideration by other states and some of which would unreasonably infringe upon prosecutors’ discretion to seek the death penalty.
Here in Washington, we can be glad authorities are already applying many of those lessons and employing capital punishment in a selective and careful manner. Since 1905, six people have been executed for crimes committed in Snohomish County. Most recently James Homer Elledge was executed for the 1998 murder of Eloise Fitzner at a Lynnwood church. The case made headlines and raised concerns among death penalty opponents because the defendant actually requested the death penalty. Opponents argued the state was helping Elledge commit suicide, but the law was clearly followed in the matter. And, unlike many of the death row cases in Illinois, there was never any question of James Elledge’s guilt.
But wrongful convictions weren’t the only thing the Illinois panel looked at. Panel members rejected the death penalty for murderers who are mentally retarded and who were convicted by the testimony of one person, a jailhouse informant or an accomplice.
No matter what various states across the country think of the report, recommendations that all cases should be submitted to a state board for review and that a statewide DNA database be established are sound ideas and worth serious exploration. Washington fortunately already has several review systems in place and various levels of appeals for defendants.
Perhaps the most questionable part of the findings is the panel’s reduction from 20 to five, the number of offenses deserving of execution. The shortened list would cover: murdering more than one person; killing a police officer of firefighter; killing an officer or inmate in a correctional institution; murdering to obstruct justice; and torturing the victim. The new guidelines would wipe out capital punishment as an option in some murder cases involving rape, robbery and burglary, among other crimes. It seems a bit backwards that killing an inmate would warrant the death penalty, but killing a woman in the course of a rape would not.
Most people agree that the death penalty should be used in the most heinous cases, but the term heinous should be left to each community to define. In this state, at least, county prosecutors have a good record of using their discretion with both restraint and responsibility.
While the commission’s findings should be reviewed by all states, the report is anything but the final word on the matter. The panel’s report might just raise more questions and issues for debate than it answers. But capital punishment is an issue that demands constant examination by the public to assure that the death penalty is being administered justly.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
